


better scarred than dead

by Iris_Duncan_72



Series: no rest for the wicked [3]
Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Alternate Universe - Assassins & Hitmen, Blood and Injury, Developing Friendships, Fluff, Gen, Hospitals, Late Night Conversations, changbin is an underpaid sleep-deprived registrar doctor, it's mostly sweet i promise, jeongin just wants to be friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-29
Updated: 2020-05-29
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:54:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24352438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iris_Duncan_72/pseuds/Iris_Duncan_72
Summary: Jeongin comes into the A&E very early one morning and Changbin patches him up.
Relationships: Seo Changbin & Yang Jeongin | I.N
Series: no rest for the wicked [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1399690
Comments: 13
Kudos: 161





	better scarred than dead

**Author's Note:**

> 1) Their story is short but Jeongin and Changbin have been waiting patiently almost as long as Jisung and Felix were for it to be told so. Enjoy.
> 
> 2) For anyone who's forgotten - Changbin was the one who admitted Jisung when Hyunjin and Seungmin brought him to the hospital two years before this.
> 
> 3) My knowledge of hospital protocol, especially in South Korea, is extremely patchy, pardon any glaring mistakes.

It was late when the kid showed up. Not that he was _really_ a kid. He just made Changbin think a bit of one, though his main experience of children was in the hospital and that was rarely a happy occasion for anyone, so maybe the not-kid actually reminded Changbin of his _idea_ of a child –

Look, it’d been a while since Changbin had had a decent sleep, okay. Between the research paper bearing down on him and his twelve-hour shift at the hospital, he hadn’t managed to grab more than a couple of hasty catnaps in the past eighteen hours. By the time four a.m. rolled around, the A&E had been quiet as a graveyard on this cool spring night for several hours and Changbin had won the past thirteen games of solitaire against his phone. Changmin was meant to be with him but the brat had left to complete the hourly round of the wards a few minutes ago and would likely dawdle as long as he could before he returned. That was almost definitely against protocol (they were _really_ meant to have two people available at the front) but the hospital had a slight problem with understaffing and late night trouble was rare enough here that the higher-ups usually just left two of them to it.

Anyway.

The doors opened and Changbin was grateful for the distraction from his slow descent into madness. He identified the reason for the new arrival’s visit – ripped open shirt, a glint of bone amongst all the blood, carefully cradled arm – before he saw their face, by which point Changbin was already out of his seat and halfway around the counter. Then he recognised the man and blinked, startled.

‘Jeongin-ssi?’

Curiously vulpine eyes focused on him, the smile breaking out across Jeongin’s face made slightly stiff by the obvious pain he was in. ‘Hello, Changbin-hyung.’ There was an unsightly purple bruise mottling one side of his jaw. ‘I hoped it’d be you here tonight.’

_(‘Minho-hyung, Chan-hyung, Changbin-hyung, let me introduce Seungmin’s and my friend, Jeongin. He’s been staying with us for the past few months.’_

_The young man standing fractionally behind Hyunjin had big dark eyes and an air of uncertainty about him, like he wasn’t entirely sure he was allowed to be here._

_Changbin recalled the message Hyunjin had sent him (and presumably Minho and Chan) that afternoon, mentioning a long-term guest who had been going through a difficult period and asking him to be mindful of that when he interacted with him. That alone had been food for thought – while Hyunjin was exactly the kind of soft-hearted person to go around taking hard-done-by souls under his wing, Changbin had been surprised that_ Seungmin _had gone along with it. He was made of sterner stuff than his boyfriend._

_‘It’s nice to meet you all,’ Jeongin said quietly, bowing politely._

_Chan returned the greeting with his typical effervescent cheeriness and Jeongin’s gaze flitted over them all with unusual intensity. Changbin felt a bit like he’d been x-rayed.)_

‘Er.’ Changbin wasn’t sure how to respond to that but, given the situation, he didn’t really need to.

Instead, he whipped out his pager, flicking Changmin an urgent summons back to A&E, and began rattling off the standard questions about symptoms and reactions and whether Jeongin had had any painkillers as Changbin ushered him to the nearest treatment room. Jeongin went easily enough, if a little unsteady on his feet, doing a remarkable job of keeping calm despite what surely had to be a traumatic injury for him. Changbin snapped on a pair of gloves and grabbed a large pair of scissors, a couple of clean cloths, and filled a small basin with saline solution before carefully cutting Jeongin’s ruined shirt open further and gently cleaning the bloody flesh enough to assess whether surgery would be required. Jeongin winced, his face pale and the corners of his mouth pinched, but he stayed quiet and Changbin found himself reconsidering the picture of Jeongin he’d compiled over the better part of the last year.

‘Do you have any other injuries?’ Changbin asked. He was fairly sure Jeongin would’ve mentioned them if he did but it was part of the job to double-check these things.

‘Nothing that needs a doctor,’ Jeongin replied through gritted teeth.

Changbin wondered fleetingly how many more bruises he was hiding.

‘Okay, this looks like a pretty clean break so you shouldn’t need surgery,’ Changbin concluded. ‘I’m going to call the radiologist and we’ll get an x-ray –’

‘No.’

Changbin stiffened, surprised, and raised his brows at Jeongin, who shook his head.

‘No x-ray,’ he said firmly. ‘I trust your assessment, hyung.’

‘It’s – it’s not a matter of _trust_ ,’ Changbin stammered, bemused by the rejection. ‘It’s protocol, I have to –’

‘Then write it up as a break that didn’t require scanning,’ Jeongin interrupted, ‘or I’ll leave now.’

Changbin sputtered, eyes wide in bewildered incredulity. ‘You can’t just _leave_ without –’

‘You wouldn’t be able to stop me.’ Jeongin’s black eyes were hard and his tone deadly serious. ‘Please just wrap it, hyung. I’d rather not do it myself.’

It took approximately four seconds of that fierce stare drilling into his skull for Changbin to cave, mentally chucking the legally binding hospital rules out the window.

‘Fine,’ he relented, grudging. ‘Can’t have you making everything a thousand times worse by trying this _yourself.’_ About to pick up the scissors again, Changbin paused as a horrifying thought struck him and he forced himself to look back up at Jeongin. ‘Have... have you? Done this before?’

The question was hardly appropriate, let alone relevant, but courtesy of the dozen or so dinners at Seungmin and Hyunjin’s and Minho and Chan’s which Changbin had been able to cram into his schedule, he had a rather amicable acquaintanceship with Jeongin. Hell, they had more than _that_ – on one particularly memorable evening, they’d spent an entire two hours discussing the merits of every single possible hot chocolate recipe either of them had ever heard of. Jeongin’s eyes had been shining like a little kid’s by the end of the night. Besides, the crazy man had just convinced him to blithely disregard his duty in a manner that Changbin had been sure would take at least a decade of slowly being worn down by the system for him to even _consider_.

Jeongin pursed his lips. ‘Well. Not _this_ , exactly. This is the first time I’ve actually _broken_ my collarbone.’

That was so very far from the answer Changbin wanted to hear.

With a stupendous amount of willpower, he managed to convince his hands to pick up the scissors and resume cutting away the blood-soaked top. ‘You in a fight club or something?’ Changbin prodded delicately, keeping his attention firmly fixed on the task at hand.

Jeongin snorted softly. ‘No.’

Right. Well. Alright then. Good talk –

Changbin inhaled sharply, head jerking up. _‘Pain relief_. Oh gods, I’m so sorry, I can’t believe I forgot to –’

When he would have moved away to hunt down some pills, Jeongin forestalled him with a light hand on his arm, reddened fingers holding him still. Changbin blinked at him in askance.

‘I don’t want any, hyung.’ Fox-bright eyes pinned Changbin again, Jeongin once more uncomfortably intent. ‘I’ll be fine.’

But Changbin was a _doctor_ , for fuck’s sake. Of course he was doing to argue. ‘Jeongin-ssi, this is really –’

 _‘No drugs,’_ Jeongin barked.

His hold on Changbin’s arm tightened and Changbin squeaked inelegantly, yanking his arm back – well, _trying_ to but apparently Jeongin had a grip of steel because Changbin wasn’t going anywhere. Fortunately, as soon as he realised what he was doing, Jeongin released Changbin, dropping his hand to his uninjured side.

‘No drugs,’ Jeongin repeated, quieter but no less firm. He hesitated, then added, ‘I’ve survived worse without them.’

Changbin stared at him, heart thumping a little hard for this time in the morning. He felt sick to his stomach and not just because he’d had nothing but shitty coffee and energy drinks in the last ten or so hours.

‘You’re so lucky I’m on duty tonight,’ Changbin managed to rasp out past the boulder lodged in his throat as he stepped closer again.

Jeongin relaxed slightly as Changbin finished cutting up his shirt and carefully peeled it off him. ‘Mm, well, luck doesn’t have _that_ much to do with it...’

And Changbin would have responded to that, he really would (because _what the hell_ ), but the sight of the mangled starburst of long-healed scar tissue on the left side of Jeongin’s belly distracted him quite thoroughly, even more so than the smattering of bruises around Jeongin’s right side ribs.

‘Um.’

Before tonight, Changbin had known Jeongin as a quiet, if sharp-tongued, young man who twitched at loud noises and possessed truly astounding hand-eye coordination. Apparently that mental picture was missing some fairly crucial pieces.

Jeongin covered the scar with a hand, a few twisting tendrils peeking out around his fingers. ‘A story for another time.’

Changbin had been staring. Fuck. Internally scolding himself for his complete lack of professionalism, Changbin refocused on the task at hand. Wordlessly, he picked up a new cloth, dampened it, and continued cleaning the area around the broken bone, going as gently as he could. Jeongin stayed very still but his breathing was shallow and his eyes were a little glazed, like he might faint.

‘Let me know if you’re going to pass out,’ Changbin mumbled, rinsing the cloth. ‘We don’t want you to get a concussion too.’

‘We don’t,’ Jeongin agreed, his voice strained. ‘Gonna have enough trouble explaining this to Hyunjin-hyung and Seungmin-hyung as it is.’

Changbin got the feeling Jeongin was giving him a lead-in, practically inviting the doctor to distract him from the no doubt ridiculous amount of pain he was in. With medication decidedly off the cards, Changbin was more than happy to oblige him.

‘You’re still living with them, then?’ It’d been a couple of months since Changbin had had enough time to attend a group dinner, but he’d been under the impression that Jeongin was only staying with the outrageously sappy couple temporarily.

‘Mhm. We’re moving next month. Not far, just a bigger apartment.’ Jeongin’s voice hitched and it took him a moment to continue. ‘I... tried to leave once, before I met you, and Hyunjin-hyung cried.’

Despite himself, Changbin paused again, squinting at Jeongin suspiciously. ‘Did they kidnap you or something?’

Jeongin exhaled a huff of air that might have been a very weak laugh. ‘No. Seungmin-hyung – well, uh, they’re, I guess they’re family. Yeah.’ He smiled, faint but genuine. ‘They’re my family.’

An irritatingly, if unsurprisingly, cryptic answer, although they’d clearly moved on from the “friends” Hyunjin had labelled them as last summer. Changbin hummed in acknowledgement and finished wiping away the blood on Jeongin’s skin. Bone gleamed wet and white through torn flesh. Disposing of the dirty cloths and his gloves, Changbin tugged on a pair of new ones and assembled an appropriate dressing, high-grade tape for exactly these situations, and a sterile needle and thread.

‘You’re sure you don’t want to take something?’ Changbin asked, threading the needle and eyeing the open wound meaningfully.

Any colour left in Jeongin’s cheeks drained but he set his jaw and jerked his head in a nod. ‘Gonna lean against the wall,’ he muttered, carefully scooting back on the bed till he could do so. ‘Might black out when you hold the bone down.’

Changbin couldn’t even begin to imagine how much a person would have to loathe drugs to refuse so much as a paracetamol tablet when about to have their skin _stitched up_ over a _broken bone_. He didn’t question Jeongin again, though, only gave him a warning look and leaned forward to start. To his credit, Jeongin kept his flinch small at the first pinch of the needle and if Changbin hadn’t been so close, he never would have heard the strangled groans that died in the back of Jeongin’s throat.

‘You know, I think we have some hot chocolate in the breakroom,’ Changbin murmured as he approached the jutting bone. ‘I’ll make you a cup after we’re done here, how’s that sound?’

‘Sounds great, h– hyung,’ Jeongin choked out.

Changbin’s heart clenched in useless sympathy. ‘Okay, good, now hang on tight, this is –’ He cut himself off before he said something really stupid, like _this is going to hurt_.

‘I’m ready.’ Jeongin’s voice was a rasp.

Using the heel of his right palm to push the bone back into place and keep it down, Changbin transferred the needle to his left hand (ambidexterity was something he’d learned in his first year attached to the hospital as a junior doctor), and Jeongin gasped sharply, his whole body going rigid. Belatedly, Changbin realised he probably should have called Changmin or one of the nurses from the upstairs wards down to help him, but despite the increased difficulty that came with doing this alone, he privately conceded that Jeongin was almost certain to have forbade it. Why Jeongin was so twitchy, however, was a question for another time, preferably not one in which Changbin was stitching him back together.

Changbin shifted his hold on the bone under the nearly-sewn skin and Jeongin jolted like he’d been electrocuted, a guttural noise of barely suppressed agony ripping from deep in his chest. He shifted and Changbin froze mid-stitch, not wanting to damage anything, but Jeongin was only stuffing his fist in his mouth, eyes squeezing shut as he bit down hard.

Swallowing thickly, Changbin kept going. ‘Almost there,’ he breathed, feeling a desperation to reassure that he usually only felt around badly hurt children. ‘You’re doing great, Jeongin, you hear me? I’m nearly finished.’

The moment Changbin was done, he fastened a knot in the thread and snipped the end off, dropping the needle with unreasonable haste into the tray of used items. He very gently wiped away the excess blood before smoothing on some soothing cream that would promote healing onto the wound. Still putting pressure on the bone, Changbin then covered it with a dressing and removed his hands long enough to unwrap the thick brown strapping tape and carefully apply two strips of it over the dressing to keep it in place and the bone down. Jeongin twitched a couple of times but mostly managed to hold still, pained whimpers escaping him.

‘There you go,’ Changbin said, relieved to step back. ‘All done.’

Very slowly, Jeongin removed his hand from his mouth, though he kept his eyes firmly shut as he lowered his hand and took a couple of shaky breaths. Only then did his lashes flick up, fox eyes stark against his washed out skin, moisture welling at his lash line.

‘Fuck,’ Jeongin gritted out between clenched teeth. ‘That was awful.’

Tidying away and disposing of his equipment as necessary, Changbin started, ‘It’s not too late for –’

 _‘No.’_ Jeongin glared at him, chest rising and falling unsteadily. ‘I’ll take you up on the hot chocolate, though.’

Changbin sighed, grabbing a large square of gauzy fabric designed for slings. ‘I don’t know how you get away with this, I really don’t. Sure, maybe _I’m_ a pushover but –’

‘I haven’t been a patient in a clinic or hospital in eight years,’ Jeongin admitted.

Caught off guard once more, Changbin paused in the act of shaping the sling. ‘What... really? Not even for a check-up?’

Jeongin made an abortive attempt at a shrug, gaze dropping. ‘I’m pretty self-sufficient.’

Hmm. Changbin wondered if this had anything to do with the troublesome time Jeongin had been going through last year or the starburst scar that looked like a bullet wound. All he quietly asked as he gently positioned Jeongin’s right arm across his chest to wrap the sling correctly, however, was, ‘What changed?’

Jeongin was silent long enough that Changbin thought he simply wasn’t going to answer, which, okay, fair. He clearly had some serious problems with hospitals (and drugs) and Changbin had no wish to stir up unpleasant memories. He opened his mouth to apologise for the intrusive question, but Jeongin beat him to it.

‘Hyunjin-hyung said you’re a good doctor.’ Jeongin’s voice was just shy of inaudible but his words were distinct. ‘He doesn’t know about lots of things but... hyung’s good with people.’

‘Well.’ Changbin wasn’t sure what to say to that. ‘I’m glad that you came in. No-one should have to deal with something like that –’ he raised his brows at Jeongin’s collar – ‘on their own.’

Jeongin looked at him like he’d said something revelatory, which was weird because Changbin definitely had not.

‘Changbin-hyung,’ Jeongin began, then paused, seeming to waver on the edge of a decision.

‘Yes?’

Jeongin huffed and sagged back against the wall, dropping his gaze. ‘Can I have that hot chocolate now?’

Quite sure that was not what he’d originally intended to say, Changbin nonetheless nodded. ‘Sure, it’ll take me just a minute.’ But he hesitated by the door, turning back with his hand on the handle. ‘Don’t go anywhere, okay?’

Perhaps it was irrational but Changbin had an odd notion that Jeongin might just slip away as soon as Changbin left the room.

Jeongin blinked at him, slow and tired, but a little smile curled around the corners of his mouth. ‘Okay, hyung. Bring two cups, yeah?’ he asked, somehow managing to be endearingly shy even in his current position.

A curl of pleasant surprise chased away the uncomfortable feeling in Changbin’s chest and it was with some relief that he replied, ‘Sure thing, kiddo,’ and let himself out.

\--

When they finished up and the necessary paperwork had been filed half an hour later, Jeongin sheepishly admitted that he would be walking home and Changbin was reduced to incoherent noises of horrified distress. He promptly parked his injured friend (were they friends? Was that what they were?) on one of the crappy plastic chairs in the waiting room, scolded Changmin for staring all-too-nosily at Jeongin, and clocked himself out exactly three minutes early. No-one was going reprimand him for that, not least because, being a softie at heart, Changbin took more graveyard shifts than any of the other registrars. Then he ushered Jeongin out into the cool air of the early morning and, ignoring his weak protests, manhandled him into Changbin’s decrepit blue hatchback.

‘Hyung, you don’t have to go to all this trouble, really,’ Jeongin tried, turning liquid fox eyes on Changbin.

Who simply raised a sharp brow, switched the heaters onto max, and said drily, ‘I can always call Hyunjin if you like.’

Jeongin pouted at the gradually demisting front windscreen. ‘Hyunjin-hyung sleeps like the dead. The walls could fall down and he wouldn’t notice.’

‘Oh? Then how about Seungmin?’

Jeongin’s mouth shut with an audible click and nothing more was said on the matter.

Keen to get back to his own apartment and catch some much needed shuteye, Changbin may have stretched a couple of speed limits but traffic at this time of the morning was sparse. Jeongin still smirked and made a remark about certain doctors trying to increase the number of hospital patients, to which Changbin retorted that he was doing no such thing, thank you very much.

Arriving outside the Kim-Hwang apartment building, Changbin brought the car to a halt as close to the front doors as he could get. Jeongin eyed them a little apprehensively.

‘You know,’ Changbin began, because he was a weak, weak man, ‘you could always just. Stay out. Sleep over at my place. Adults can do that, right? Then tell Seungmin and Hyunjin you fell down the stairs or – or something.’

Jeongin laughed softly. His face was still drawn with lingering pain but the creases at the edges of his eyes as he turned his smile on Changbin were genuine. ‘Thanks, hyung,’ he murmured. ‘But the longer I leave it, the worse they’ll be. Besides, I’d have to trip pretty hard to cause a break like _this_ , wouldn’t I?’ His wry tone said he already knew the answer.

Changbin sighed, thumb tap-tapping on the steering wheel. Yeah, alright, maybe that wasn’t such a plausible explanation, not unless a set of concrete stairs had risen up and punched Jeongin straight in the chest.

‘You never said how it happened, anyway,’ he commented in what he hoped was an off-handed sort of way.

Jeongin looked out the windscreen, smile cooling, eyes glinting. ‘Don’t worry about it, hyung,’ he said eventually. ‘I got distracted, that’s all.’

‘Uh-huh. You do realise I’m a _doctor_ , right?’

Another puff of laughter, the wicked delight in it curling through the car. ‘The white coat gave you away.’

Unclicking his seatbelt and opening the door with his unbound hand, Jeongin only got as far as getting his feet out before Changbin blurted, ‘This is the part where you tell me I should see the other guy to make me feel better.’

Jeongin didn’t move for a minute, keeping his back turned, and Changbin’s heartbeat quickened anxiously. Then Jeongin twisted to look back over his shoulder and his grin was sly as a fox, smug as a cat.

‘But I _don’t_ want you to see the other guy, hyung,’ Jeongin said mischievously. ‘It might give you nightmares.’

Changbin made a distinctly unattractive gurgling sound in the back of his throat and Jeongin snickered as he got out of the car.

‘I – what are – who – you said you weren’t in a fight club!’ Changbin spluttered.

Jeongin leaned down to flash a deceptively innocent eye smile at him. ‘Well, it’s _certainly_ not a club, hyung.’

Then he winked, slammed the door shut on Changbin’s speechless expression, and made his way into the building without a backwards glance.

Changbin was still sitting there, frozen in uncomprehending bewilderment, when his phone buzzed violently. He jumped slightly before hastily scooping it up.

_From: Hot Chocolate Lover_ _☕_

_To: Binnie-hyung_

_I’ll bring you some hot chocolate next time, okay, hyung? No offense but the hospital stuff was kinda shit :P (5:31 AM)_

_From: Binnie-hyung_

_To: Hot Chocolate Lover_ _☕_

_Okay! No offense taken, I know it’s terrible (5:32 AM)_

_WAIT_

_What do you mean “next time”?? (5:35 AM)_

_From: Hot Chocolate Lover_ _☕_

_To: Binnie-hyung_

_🤣🤣🤣_ _(5:35 AM)_

_From: Binnie-hyung_

_To: Hot Chocolate Lover_ _☕_

_That’s not reassuring!! (5:36 AM)_

_Yang Jeongin! Answer your hyung! (5:38 AM)_

_...don’t get hurt just to bring me hot chocolate, okay (5:41 AM)_

_From: Hot Chocolate Lover_ _☕_

_To: Binnie-hyung_

_Got caught *sigh* they didn’t buy the tripping excuse_ _≡[_ _。。_ _]≡_ _Hyunjin-hyung grounded me_ _≡[_ _。。_ _]≡_

_Seungmin-hyung said you dressed my collarbone well though (6:18 AM)_

_And don’t worry, hyung, you’re not_ that _special (_ _￣_ _y▽,_ _￣_ _)╭ (6:19 AM)_

_[Binnie-hyung] has changed [Hot Chocolate Lover_ _☕_ _]’s nickname to [Impudent Dongsaeng]_


End file.
